Process Description and Control

B.Ramamurthy

Introduction

The fundamental task of any operating system is process management.OS must allocate resources to processes, enable sharing of information, protect resources, and enable synchronization among processes.In many modern OS the problems of process management is compounded by introduction of threads.We will process management in this chapter and threads in the next.

Topics for discussion

Requirement of processProcess statesCreation, termination and suspensionFive State ModelProcess Control Block (PCB)Process controlUnix System VSummary

What is a process?A process is simply a program in execution: an instance of a program execution.Unit of work individually schedulable by an operating system.OS keeps track of all the active processes and allocates system resources to them according to policies devised to meet design performance objectives.To meet process requirements OS must maintain many data structures efficiently.The process abstraction is a fundamental OS means for management of concurrent program execution. Example: instances of process co-existing.

Major requirementsOS must interleave the execution of a number of processes to maximize processor use while providing reasonable response time.OS must allocate resources to processes in conformance with a specific policy. Example: (i) higher priority, (ii) avoid deadlock.Support user creation of processes and IPC both of which may aid in the structuring of applications.Reading assignment: pages 108-114 including “two state process model”

Process creation

Four common events that lead to a process creation are:

1) When a new batch-job is presented for execution.

2) When an interactive user logs in.3) When OS needs to perform an operation

(usually IO) on behalf of a user process, concurrently with that process.

4) To exploit parallelism an user process can spawn a number of processes.

==> concept of parent and child processes.

Termination of a processNormal completion, time limit exceeded, memory unavailableBounds violation, protection error, arithmetic error, invalid instructionIO failure, Operator intervention, parent termination, parent requestA number of other conditions are possible. Segmentation fault : usually happens when you try write/read into/from a non-existent array/structure/object component. Or access a pointer to a dynamic data before creating it. (new etc.)Bus error: Related to function call and return. You have messed up the stack where the return address or parameters are stored.

A five-state process model

Five states: New, Ready, Running, Blocked, ExitNew : A process has been created but has not yet been admitted to the pool of executable processes.Ready : Processes that are prepared to run if given an opportunity. That is, they are not waiting on anything except the CPU availability.Running: The process that is currently being executed. (Assume single processor for simplicity.)Blocked : A process that cannot execute until a specified event such as an IO completion occurs.Exit: A process that has been released by OS either after normal termination or after abnormal termination (error).

State Transition Diagram

NEW READY RUNNING

BLOCKED

EXITAdmit

Dispatch

Time-out

Release

Event WaitEvent

Occurs

Think of the conditions under which state transitions may take place.

Queuing model

Event1 Wait

AdmitReady queue

DispatchCPU

Release

Time-out

Event1Occurs

Event2 Wait

Event2Occurs

Eventn Wait

Event noccurs

Process Transitions

Ready --> Running When it is time, the dispatcher selects

a new process to run

Running --> Ready the running process has expired his

time slot the running process gets interrupted

because a higher priority process is in the ready state

Process Transitions

Running --> Blocked When a process requests something for

which it must wait a service that the OS is not ready to perform an access to a resource not yet available initiates I/O and must wait for the result waiting for a process to provide input (IPC)

Blocked --> Ready When the event for which it was waiting

occurs

Process suspensionMany OS are built around (Ready, Running, Blocked) states. But there is one more state that may aid in the operation of an OS - suspended state.When none of the processes occupying the main memory is in a Ready state, OS swaps one of the blocked processes out onto to the Suspend queue.When a Suspended process is ready to run it moves into “Ready, Suspend” queue. Thus we have two more state: Blocked_Suspend, Ready_Suspend.

Process suspension (contd.)Blocked_suspend : The process is in the secondary memory and awaiting an event.Ready_suspend : The process is in the secondary memory but is available for execution as soon as it is loaded into the main memory.State transition diagram Fig.3.8Observe on what condition does a state transition take place? What are the possible state transitions?

State Transition Diagram (take 2)

NEW READY RUNNING

BLOCKED

EXITAdmit

Dispatch

Time-out

Release

Event WaitEvent

Occurs

Think of the conditions under which state transitions may take place.

Activate

Suspend

Event occurs

ActivateSuspend

Blocked Suspend

ReadySuspend

Operating System Control Structures

An OS maintains the following tables for managing processes and resources: Memory tables (see later) I/O tables (see later) File tables (see later) Process tables (this chapter)

Process descriptionOS constructs and maintains tables of information about each entity that it is managing : memory tables, IO tables, file tables, process tables.Process control block: Associated with each process are a number of attributes used by OS for process control. This collection is known as PCB. Process image: Collection of program, data, stack, and PCB together is known as Process image.For more details on PCB see Table 3.5

Process control block

Contains three categories of information:1) Process identification2) Process state information3) Process control information

Process identification: numeric identifier for the process (pid) identifier of the parent (ppid) user identifier (uid) - id of the usr responsible

for the process.

Process control block (contd.)

Process state information: User visible registers Control and status registers : PC, IR,

PSW, interrupt related bits, execution mode.

Stack pointers

Process control block (contd.)

Process control information: Scheduling and state information : Process

state, priority, scheduling-related info., event awaited.

Data structuring : pointers to other processes (PCBs): belong to the same queue, parent of process, child of process or some other relationship.

Interprocess comm: Various flags, signals, messages may be maintained in PCBs.

Process control block (contd.)

Process control information (contd.) Process privileges: access privileges to certain

memory area, critical structures etc. Memory management: pointer to the various

memory management data structures. Resource ownership : Pointer to resources

such as opened files. Info may be used by scheduler.

PCBs need to be protected from inadvertent destruction by any routine. So protection of PCBs is a critical issue in the design of an OS.

Queues as linked lists of PCBs

OS Functions related to Processes

Process management: Process creation, termination, scheduling, dispatching, switching, synchronization, IPC support, management of PCBsMemory management: Allocation of address space to processes, swapping, page and segment management.IO management: Buffer management, allocation of IO channels and devices to processes.Support functions: Interrupt handling, accounting, monitoring.

Modes of executionTwo modes : user mode and a privileged mode called the kernel mode.Why? It is necessary to protect the OS and key OS tables such as PCBs from interference by user programs.In the kernel mode, the software has complete control of the processor and all its hardware.When a user makes a system call or when an interrupt transfers control to a system routine, an instruction to change mode is executed. This mode change will result in an error unless permitted by OS.